When Mealtimes Become Emotional Battlefields

You spent forty minutes cooking. You put the plate in front of him. He looked at it. Made a face. And declared, with the certainty of someone who just defended a doctoral thesis: “I don’t like it.”

He didn’t taste it. Didn’t smell it. Didn’t touch it. Just looked — and decided. Side note: yesterday he loved this exact food.

And then it starts: you push, he resists, you negotiate, he ignores, you threaten, he cries, you give in — or you don’t, and you’re both stuck at a table that stopped being about eating a long time ago.